A Secret Affair (16 page)

“Better that than his choosing to be wrathful, Maggie,” Sherry said.

“You see, the trouble is, Con,” Stephen added, “that my sisters expected to be matchmakers to their hearts’ content for years yet with me. But I was disobliging enough to fall in love with Cass last year when I was only twenty-five, a mere babe in arms. You are the only one left, even if you
are
a mere cousin, so you must be prepared to be
cared
about until you marry a worthy woman and settle down to live happily ever after. If you were really wise, you would do it this year and live in
peace
forever after.”

“Except,” Constantine said, “that I would be married.”

“Enough!” Margaret got firmly to her feet. “There is a ball to attend, and I would hate to arrive so late that the receiving line had even been abandoned.”

And that, Constantine thought, was the end of that. For the time being, anyway.

And his family did not approve of this spring’s mistress. Or
favorite
, to use the euphemism with which the ladies could be reasonably comfortable.

T
HEY WERE LATE ARRIVING
at the Kitteridge ball, though not by any means the last of the guests. They were there before the Duchess of Dunbarton, though that was no surprise.

Constantine was talking with a group of acquaintances when he was made aware of her arrival by a slight change in the quality of the sound around him. It was certainly true what Margaret had said earlier. The duchess really did draw eyes wherever she went, and this occasion was no exception. All she was doing was passing along the receiving line with her friend, but almost everyone had turned a head to watch.

She was all in gleaming white again—silver-threaded white lace over white silk. Her hair was piled high in intricate curls, though wavy tendrils had been allowed to trail over her temples and along her neck in order to tease the eyes and the imagination. A small diamond tiara glistened in her hair. Diamonds
at her ears and bosom and on her wrists and gloved fingers sparkled and winked in the candlelight. There were even rosettes of diamonds sewn to the outsides of her white dancing slippers.

Or
not
diamonds.

Another petal had been peeled away from the rose last night, leaving Constantine to wonder if there were perhaps more within after all. She had sold two-thirds of her diamonds, doubtless for a colossal sum, because there were certain
causes
in which she was interested.

Charitable
causes, he had understood. The lady had a heart, then, and a social conscience.

In its own way it had been as startling a revelation as the fact that she had come to him as a virgin.

He had the rather unsettling suspicion that he had misjudged the duchess, that perhaps she was not shallow after all. But he was certainly not alone in his former opinion of her, as Margaret’s words had proved. He had no cause to be indignant with her.

Constantine strode across the ballroom in the duchess’s direction, aware that he was being watched with interest. There would not be many people in this room who did not know that she was his new mistress or that he was her new lover—depending upon the perspective of the beholder. There was no such thing as a secret affair between two members of the
ton
.

He bowed to them both, secured a waltz with the duchess for later in the evening, and asked Miss Leavensworth for the opening set. By that time the duchess’s usual court was gathering about her.

He led Miss Leavensworth onto the floor, where the lines were already forming. He had asked her to dance because she was the duchess’s friend and house guest and because she had been a member of the theater party the evening before and he had conversed with her there for several minutes and liked her. She seemed an intelligent, sensible lady.

He certainly had no ulterior motive in dancing with her—not at first, anyway. He asked about her home only because he guessed that
she was probably homesick, especially as her fiancé was back in the village she had left behind.

“The trouble with being in London for the Season,” he said to her as they waited for the dancing to begin, “is that no matter how much one enjoys oneself, one invariably misses one’s home in the country. I always do. Do you find the same thing?”

“I do indeed, Mr. Huxtable, though it seems quite ungrateful to admit it,” she said gravely. “It is wonderful to be here, and I will never forget that I have attended
ton
balls and gone to the theater and opera and visited some of the most famous of the museums and galleries here. And the best thing of all is being with Hannah, whom I see all too rarely. Even the shopping is more exciting than I expected. But you are right, and I must confess to a longing to see my family and my betrothed again.”

“And your village?” he said.

“And that too,” she said. “London is so …
vast.”

And he saw a way of satisfying some idle curiosity. Or perhaps not so idle. Everyone knew how the duchess had used her beauty to rise out of obscurity and become the bride of a duke who had resisted matrimony until well into his seventies. It would have been the stuff of legend if the huge age gap had deprived the story of all romance and made it merely rather sordid instead. No one seemed to know anything about the obscurity from which the duchess had risen, however. When he had asked her about her family, she had shrugged and said she had none.

But she must have had family at some time.

“What
is
your village?” he asked.

“Markle,” she said, “in Lincolnshire. No one except those who live within ten miles of it has even
heard
of it. But it is quiet and pretty, and it is home.”

“Your parents are both still living?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I am well blessed. My father was the vicar, but he has retired now, and we live together in a cottage at the edge of the
village. It is smaller than the vicarage but very cozy. My mother and father are very happy there. So am I, but of course I will be moving back to the vicarage when I marry in August.”

“And you will be the lady of the house this time,” he said, “instead of the daughter.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “It will seem strange. I am looking forward to it immensely, though.”

“Markle,” he said, frowning. “Something sounds familiar about the name. What is the main family living there?”

“Sir Colin Young?” she said, posing the answer as a question. “He lives at Elm Court just beyond the village with Lady Young and their three children. Lady Young, in fact, is—”

She stopped abruptly. She flushed.

He waited for a moment, eyebrows raised, but she did not continue.

“I do believe the dancing is about to begin,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she said with bright enthusiasm. “You are right. Oh, just
look
at all the flowers. And all the candles in the chandeliers. There must be
dozens
of them. And so many guests. I shall be dreaming of this when I leave here.”

He guessed that she was not the sort of lady who gushed with enthusiasm a great deal. Something had flustered her. His questions, probably, especially the last. And the answers she had given—and almost given. Did she realize now, he wondered, that he had been deliberately probing for information?

That had not been well done of him.

But who
was
Lady Young? He had never heard of either Markle or Sir Colin Young. The man might be a baronet, but he had never mingled in London society to Constantine’s knowledge.

They danced an elegant country dance with intricate, almost stately figures. She was a good dancer.

The duchess must have grown up in Markle too. Was that where she had met Dunbarton at a wedding?
Whose
wedding? Young’s?

He had already made Miss Leavensworth uncomfortable. He had
already chastised himself for prying. There was no excuse, then, for continuing to do so. But he did.

“Sir Colin Young,” he said when the figures brought them together for perhaps a whole minute. “Was he not somehow connected with the Duke of Dunbarton?”

“A very distant cousin, I believe,” she said.

Fourteenth or so in line to the dukedom, if Constantine was not very much mistaken.

There was no casual way of asking for the duchess’s maiden name. But her family must be lower on the social scale than Young, or Miss Leavensworth would have named
them
as the most prominent family. Unless the duchess was a sister or daughter of Young, that was. It was a distinct possibility. Either way she had done extremely well for herself in snaring a duke for a husband even if he
was
an old man. Or perhaps especially
because
he was an old man. Marrying him had been a brilliant way of gaining instant status and wealth and the prospect of freedom not far distant.

It was the conventional way of seeing the Duchess of Dunbarton, of course.

But …

But she had converted the large bulk of the jewels Dunbarton had given her into cash, which she had given to “causes” in which she was interested. She kept the other jewels because of their sentimental value.

If she was to be believed, that was. But he believed her.

Was the duchess a bit of a mystery after all?

And why was he doing this? Of what possible interest could it be to him to discover just who she was? Or who she had been? He had never felt this compulsion with any of his other mistresses.

And then another thought struck him. Would he like
her
probing into the secret places of
his
life?

He must ask no more questions.

They had worked their way to the head of the lines, and it was their turn to twirl down between them to land at the foot and begin
the upward climb all over again. Miss Leavensworth laughed as they twirled, and Constantine smiled at her.

He could not stop his thoughts, though.

They had been friends since childhood, she and the duchess. It had not struck him as strange until now. Miss Leavensworth was a woman of modest birth and aspirations, daughter of a retired vicar and betrothed of a working one. Yet the duchess had remained close to her in the eleven years or so since her marriage had elevated her in status far above the vicar’s daughter.

One more question.

“Do you and the Duchess of Dunbarton write to each other when you are not visiting her?” he asked when there was a chance for some verbal exchange again.

“Oh, at least once a week,” she said. “Sometimes more often if there is something more than usually interesting to report upon. We are inveterate letter writers, Hannah and I.”

“She never comes to visit you?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

No explanation.

“Though I am trying to persuade her to come for my wedding in August,” she said a few moments later. “It would mean so much to me to have my dearest friend there. She says no, but I have not given up hope yet.”

So she would not go back to Markle even for Miss Leavensworth’s wedding? The Duchess of Dunbarton he had thought he knew—the one the
ton
thought it knew—would surely have loved nothing better than to return home with a large entourage of servants to flaunt her title and wealth before the rural yokels among whom she had grown up.

Was it
true
that she had no family?

“She has no family with whom to stay?” he asked.

“She could stay with my parents,” she said. “They would be delighted to have her.”

Which could mean yes or no. But he must leave this. He felt vaguely guilty. Perhaps even a little more than vaguely. He
was
prying.

“Have you visited the Tower of London yet?” he asked.

“I have not,” she said. “But I am very much hoping to do so before I return home.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “you and the duchess will allow me to escort you there one afternoon.”

“Oh,” she said, “that is very obliging of you, Mr. Huxtable. I am not sure how interested Hannah is, though, in—”

“I shall remind her,” he said, “that she will be able to stand on the very spot on which Queen Anne Boleyn, among others over the years, had her head chopped off. I daresay
that
will draw her interest.”

She laughed.

“You are quite possibly right,” she said. “It is one spot I will quite studiously avoid, however.”

“I shall make arrangements with the duchess,” he said.

And he concentrated upon the dancing. It was an activity he had always enjoyed. He looked along the line of ladies opposite and could see his cousins—all of them, including Vanessa, and including Averil and Jessica, Elliott’s sisters. Only Cecily was absent, at home in the country awaiting her third confinement. The duchess was there too, looking stunningly beautiful. Next to her was the Countess of Lanting, Monty’s younger sister. And of course there were all the young misses who had recently been launched upon society and the marriage mart, some of them bright and eager, some affecting a fashionable ennui, as though this was something they were
so
accustomed to doing that it really was a quite colossal bore.